Businesses want technology to help recover from COVID-19

More Australian companies want to know how they can use technology and automation to help them get back on their feet.

ServiceNow’s senior vice-president for Asia-Pacific and Japan Mitch Young. Picture: Supplied.

Australian companies are rapidly embracing automation and digitisation to manage the safe return of staff to their offices or to help them to permanently do more work from home post-COVID-19, according to one of the world’s biggest cloud-automation firms.

ServiceNow’s Now Platform, which streamlines company workflows across a range of information technology systems and integrates them in a single platform, is being used by more than half the companies listed on the ASX. Its clients include Deloitte, Qantas, the NSW government, universities and some of the big four banks.

But Mitch Young, ServiceNow’s Singapore-based senior vice-president and general manager for the Asia-Pacific and Japan, says a growing number of clients are turning to automation to manage their business recovery efforts in the new post-COVID reality.

“Most enterprises today are assembling a crisis-management team that spans multiple departments that haven’t worked together,” Young says. “We see customers creating these tiger teams quickly to build their policies, and we are helping with thought leadership and innovation.’’

He says companies, from a “methodology point of view”, are prepared for the challenge but that there are lots of things they have never done before.

“You can’t solve this on spreadsheets,’’ he says. “The questions our clients are asking are ‘Are our employees ready and willing to come back to the office? How do we capture elements around employee health screening? On the workplace side, are the facilities ready and do we have the requisite protection equipment? Finally, as most enterprises will move towards a phased approach to return, how do you manage those facilities to ensure they are ready for that from a capacity and scheduling perspective’.”

ServiceNow, which serves almost three-quarters of the Fortune 500 companies in the US and has a partnership with videoconferencing giant Zoom, has launched four Safe Workplace apps to automate processes in the post-COVID-19 world that would otherwise be manual.

One allows companies to gauge each employee’s readiness to return to the workplace, while another helps staff screen their health at home. A third allows facilities to manage PPE (personal protective equipment) and other sanitising inventory, while the fourth helps manage social distancing in the workplace and ensures workspace cleaning protocols are met.

“These apps were made available mid-last month and more than 300 customers around the world have already downloaded them,’’ Young says.

ServiceNow, which has hired 100 people during the crisis, is also helping companies rethink their software and spending needs.

“Often, customers lack visibility across all their assets. We have seen companies be very aggressive in moving to rationalise some systems,’’ Young says. Six months ago, before COVID-19 took hold, the dialogue with many clients was about man versus machine, artificial intelligence and the jobs of the future.

“What we are seeing today is, ‘I am not having that discussion with customers’. There is recognition that we need to automate things, do them faster than ever before,’’ he says.

“For a country like Australia, this might represent an opportunity. Where before certain menial tasks where sent offshore, how can I bring those back onshore so I have a more resilient work platform? And then rather than re-employ people to do them, can I replace them using technology?”